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Willow, Our Quantum Chip

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Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#91

Post by wasabi991011 »

vessenes wrote: post #45
rdtsc wrote: post #27

The main part for me is reducing error faster as they scale. This was a major road-block, known as "below threshold”. That's a major achievement. I am not sure about RCS as the benchmark as not sure how useful that is in practice. It just produced really nice numbers. If I had a few billions of pocket change around, would I buy this to run RCS really fast? -Nah, probably not. I'll get more excited when they factor nu…

The implication seems to be that they can implement other gates. As my gen z kids say: huge if true.

It's really important to note that the error correction test and the random circuit test are separate tests.

The error correction is producing a single logical qubit of quantum memory, i.e. a single qubit with no gates applied to it.

Meanwhile, the random circuit sampling uses physical qubits with no error correction, and is used as a good benchmark in part because it can prove "quantumness" even in the presence of noise.[1]

[1] https://research.google/blog/validating-random-circuit-sampl...

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#92

Post by johnfn »

jawns wrote: post #8

> It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse I see the evidence, and I see the conclusion, but there's a lot of ellipses between the evidence and the conclusion. Do quantum computing folks really think that we are borrowing capacity from other universes for these calculations?

You don't even have to get to the point where you're reading a post off Scott Aaronson's blog[1] at all; his headline says "If you take nothing else from this blog: quantum computers won't solve hard problems instantly by just trying all solutions in parallel."

[1]: https://scottaaronson.blog/

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#93

Post by [deleted] »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #3

So one of the interesting comparisons between Quantum computing vs classical in the video: 5 mins vs 10^25 years. So are there any tradeoffs or specific cases in which the use cases for Quantum computing works or is this generic for "all" computing use cases? if later then this will change everything and would change the world.

[deleted]

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#94

Post by echelon »

winwang wrote: post #85
vessenes wrote: post #18

I’m a quantum dabbler so I’ll throw out an armchair reaction: this is a significant announcement. My memory is that 256 bit keys in non quantum resistant algos need something like 2500 qubits or so; and by that I mean generally useful programmable qubits. To show a bit over 100 qubits with stability, meaning the information survives a while, long enough to be read, and general enough to run some benchmarks on is some…

Edit after skimming arxiv preprint[1]: Yeah, this is pretty huge. They achieved the result with surface codes, which are general ECCs. The repetition code was used to further probe quantum ECC floor. "Just POC" likely doesn't do it justice. (Original comment): Also quantum dabbler (coincidentally dabbled in bitflip quantum error correction research). Skimmed the post/research blog. I believe the key point is the scal…

Google could put themselves and everyone else out of business if the algorithms that underpin our ability to do e-commerce and financial transactions can be defeated.

Goodbye not just to Bitcoin, but also Visa, Stripe, Amazon shopping, ...

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#95

Post by aithrowawaycomm »

jawns wrote: post #8

> It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse I see the evidence, and I see the conclusion, but there's a lot of ellipses between the evidence and the conclusion. Do quantum computing folks really think that we are borrowing capacity from other universes for these calculations?

In the same way people believe P != NP, most quantum computing people believe BQP != NP, and NP-complete problems will still take exponential time on quantum computers. But if we had access to arbitrary parallel universes then presumably that shouldn't be an issue.

The success on the random (quantum) circuit problem is really a valdiation of Feynman's idea, not Deutsch: classical computers need 2^n bits to simulate n qubits, so we will need quantum computers to efficiently simulate quantum phenomena.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#96

Post by thrance »

fidotron wrote: post #28

The slightly mind blowing bit is detailed here: > https://research.google/blog/making-quantum-error-correction... “the first quantum processor where error-corrected qubits get exponentially better as they get bigger” Achieving this turns the normal problem of scaling quantum computation upside down.

It also breaks a fundamental law of quantum theory, that the bigger a system in a quantum state is, the faster it collapses, exponentially so. Which should at least tell you to take Google's announcement with z grain of salt.

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#97

Post by [deleted] »

vessenes wrote: post #18

I’m a quantum dabbler so I’ll throw out an armchair reaction: this is a significant announcement. My memory is that 256 bit keys in non quantum resistant algos need something like 2500 qubits or so; and by that I mean generally useful programmable qubits. To show a bit over 100 qubits with stability, meaning the information survives a while, long enough to be read, and general enough to run some benchmarks on is some…

[deleted]

Re: Willow, Our Quantum Chip

#100

Post by melvinmelih »

jawns wrote: post #8

> It lends credence to the notion that quantum computation occurs in many parallel universes, in line with the idea that we live in a multiverse I see the evidence, and I see the conclusion, but there's a lot of ellipses between the evidence and the conclusion. Do quantum computing folks really think that we are borrowing capacity from other universes for these calculations?

> It performed a computation in under five minutes that would take one of today’s fastest supercomputers 1025 or 10 septillion years. If you want to write it out, it’s 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 years.

If it's not, what would be your explanation for this significant improvement then?

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